GE working with Bassett on making hospital rooms safer

GE Healthcare and the GE Global Research Center in Niskayuna are working with the Healthcare Association of New York State and Bassett Healthcare in Cooperstown to introduce technology that would help hospitals identify and reduce risks to patient health and safety.

The effort, part of GE’s recently launched healthymagination initiative, will focus on hand hygiene, patient falls and clinical rounds adherence. Called the Smart Patient Room, it includes optical sensors that track the movement of staff and equipment, measuring time between activities, and remotely reading bar codes.

The Patient Safety Forecaster, meanwhile, seeks to calculate costs and benefits, tracking the impact of improvements in care on patient outcomes.

“Smart, predictive technology can help make patients safer and help hospitals operate more efficiently,” said Dr. William Streck, president and CEO of Bassett Healthcare. “Patient safety is critical to overall health care quality and an urgent industrywide need.”

The testing of the two technologies is expected to begin at Bassett this fall.